The Vernon House at 46 Clarke Street has been many things in its three centuries: a merchant's Georgian mansion, the headquarters of a French general, and, since this fall, a reading room devoted to a man who lived there in the 1770s and whose story was nearly lost. On two Wednesday afternoons in October, it will also be a watercolor studio.
The Merit Badge Watercolor Workshop, led by the Newport nonprofit Downtown Designs, runs Wednesday, October 7, and again Wednesday, October 21, from 1:00 to 2:30 p.m. It is free, open to all, and beginner-friendly. Participants will paint from the inspiration of an original merit badge given to soldiers for excellent service during the American Revolution -- the kind of badge that Cato Vernon, an African heritage soldier and carpenter who lived at the house, may have received. No ticket is required.
The badge in question is the Badge of Military Merit, considered America's first military decoration and the second oldest in the world. General George Washington announced it in his general orders to the Continental Army on August 7, 1782, at his headquarters in Newburgh, New York. He designed it himself, in the form of a purple heart made of cloth or silk, edged with narrow lace or binding. It was meant for non-commissioned officers and soldiers, a deliberate departure from the European tradition of honoring only officers. The first award came on May 3, 1783; the last on June 10 of that same year. Records are incomplete, and researchers still debate how many soldiers actually received one. The decoration fell out of use, then was redesigned and re-commissioned in 1932 by General Douglas MacArthur in honor of Washington's bicentennial -- becoming the Purple Heart that American service members receive today.
That a soldier who had been enslaved might have worn such a badge is the thread the workshop pulls on. Cato Vernon, who also sometimes went by Cato Varnum, was born in Newport around 1759. He was a skilled carpenter. He was probably one of the two Black males under sixteen listed in the 1774 census as part of William Vernon's household on Clarke Street. William Vernon was a successful merchant and shipbuilder, an early supporter of the Revolution who fled Newport when the British occupied it, and who in 1777 was appointed by the Continental Congress as president of the Eastern Navy Board -- a role resembling that of Secretary of the Navy. He was also an enslaver.
By December 1776, with the British in Newport and William Vernon gone, Cato was working in East Greenwich as an apprentice to a ship carpenter. On March 11, 1778, he enlisted in the First Rhode Island Regiment of Continentals, the famous "Black Regiment." He may have enlisted without William Vernon's permission; by law, Vernon was entitled to Cato's value. But the enlistment carried a promise: freedom in return for military service. Cato joined roughly 200 soldiers of color -- men of African, Indigenous, and European descent -- in one of the first integrated units of the Continental Army. He served for more than five hard years, through the entire war, and was manumitted, recorded as "absolutely free" from enslavement through that service. He was granted a badge of distinction for "bravery, fidelity, and good conduct."
Life after the war was not easy. In August 1793, Cato Vernon was in a Newport jail because he could not pay his debts. He wrote a letter from jail to William Vernon, and there is a record of William Vernon paying the debt so that Cato would be free. He died around 1800.
The house where he lived has its own layers. The application for its inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places calls it one of Newport's "most interesting buildings." Peter Harrison, the designer of the Redwood Library, is often named as its architect; a 1759 remodeling gave it the appearance of a Georgian mansion. Its first owner with Revolutionary connections was Metcalf Bowler, a merchant and judge who bought the property from his father in 1759 and who, years later, was determined to have acted as a British spy. Bowler sold the house to William Vernon in 1773 or 1774. When the French arrived in Newport in 1780, Vernon offered the home as quarters for the Comte de Rochambeau, who hosted both Lafayette and Washington there while he resided in the house from 1780 to 1781. The Newport Restoration Foundation, founded by Doris Duke in 1968 to protect the city's architectural and cultural heritage, now owns the house.
This fall the Vernon House is hosting "The Cato Vernon Freedom Library," an interactive exhibit that opened Saturday, October 3, and runs through November 22. It occupies three rooms on the first floor of the national historic landmark, with an audio introduction, a timeline of Vernon's life that visitors can add to, and a reading room with books, records, and activities, staffed by artist-docents. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, with additional hours for special events, and admission is free. The exhibit is a collaboration between Center Aquidneck and the Newport Restoration Foundation, created by Center Aquidneck's founding directors Jed Hancock-Brainerd and Rebecca Noon with lead artists Jane Carey and Dominique Sindayiganza and the foundation's director of engagement, Gina Tangorra. Programming during the run includes a talk with Rhode Island State Historian Laureate Keith Stokes and recurring sewing circles with artist Bob Dilworth.
"Early on we thought this project might focus on veterans," Hancock-Brainerd and Noon said, but they found Vernon's life opened onto more -- slavery and emancipation, incarceration, collective memory, shipbuilding, African heritage history in Newport, freedom and government accountability. "We hope The Cato Vernon Freedom Library becomes a place where all kinds of communities gather -- to learn about Cato Vernon and meet their neighbors."
The watercolor workshops fit that spirit. Downtown Designs is an artist-run nonprofit studio and gallery on the corner of Broadway and Marlborough Street. Its gallery exhibits the work of self-taught artists as well as emerging and established artists from the local community, and its studio is a bright, inclusive space where a collective of artists creates sculpture, hand-built pottery, jewelry, mosaics, embroidered items, and tapestries. The organization describes itself as featuring artwork by artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and over the years it has built partnerships with local museums, schools, and artists to expand who gets to make things.
So on two October Wednesdays, brushes and water will meet a piece of cloth-and-silk history that most Americans know only by its modern descendant. The badge Washington designed was purple, heart-shaped, and stitched by hand. Painting it, in the house where Cato Vernon lived, is a way of holding a fragment of a life that surviving records only partly preserve -- and of adding, in watercolor, to what is remembered.